Mar 14, 2013

Gun Debate Nonsense Revisited 1 - The Piers Morgan Debacle

My view on above discussion:
The guy with the beard is right. There is no point regulating or
banning any gun when there are gun free zones. But IF gun free zones are
removed, then sure go ahead and begin the discussion to ban the machine
gun for civilian use, as it is escalation has reached a point where the
cops have tanks! (once this situation is taken care of - Having machine
guns make mass murder way too easy. Having gun free zones if just
nuts).

Then Piers Morgan turned it into a charade i.e. calling people stupid rather than having discussions as the BBC anchor points out at 30 seconds what Piers Morgan was doing, in my opinion was to use the emotionally charged situation surrounding Sandy Hook to push his own agenda through a process called "Anchoring". Something which Fox News are very good at (Sorry Luntz), and Piers Morgan's connection to Rupert Murdoch through The Daily Mirror & News Of The World is established so he must have known what he was doing. How can anyone not involved in advertising or publicity of any sort not understand what he was doing?

The answer to the simple question in that headline is surprisingly hard to come by. So Slate and the Twitter feed @GunDeaths are collecting data for our crowdsourced interactive. This data is necessarily incomplete. But the more people who are paying attention, the better the data will be. You can help us draw a more complete picture of gun violence in America. If you know about a gun death in your community that isn’t represented here, please tweet @GunDeaths with a citation. (If you’re not on Twitter, you can email slatedata@gmail.com.) And if you’d like to use this data yourself for your own projects, it’s open. You can download it here.

Lets look at where the assault rifle ban debate is at the moment (visual representation)...

I'm with background checks but this image
isn't an equivalent. That musket that man is carrying was the assault
rifle of his age... and he didn't have warships and didn't beat the
British with warships so the assault rifle analogy stands. Maybe we
should be talking about escalation (cops with tanks) and drugs instead?
i.e. kids on Ritalin as an educational strategy.

LONDON -- British police made four arrests for suspected phone
hacking Thursday, the first time that top editors and journalists at the
Mirror group have been implicated in the scandal that has rocked U.K.
media.One of those arrested was a former deputy to Piers Morgan, the current CNN interviewer, a person briefed on the arrests said.London's Metropolitan Police said the arrests related to "a
suspected conspiracy to intercept telephone voicemails," adding that the
investigation "mainly concerned" activities at the Sunday Mirror
tabloid between 2003 and 2004.The Sunday Mirror, like the Daily Mirror, is owned by British
newspaper company Trinity Mirror PLC, which also owns the Sunday People
and a host of regional titles. The Mirror newspapers are major rivals to
Rupert Murdoch's scandal-tainted media, which so far have been the main
focus of the phone-hacking investigation.

CNN host Piers Morgan is a former editor of The Mirror, and of the News of the World, the Rupert Murdoch
paper that was shuttered when the scandal first broke. To be clear,
Morgan has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But Bloomberg says "a
former Daily Mirror reporter later testified ... that hacking took place
on a daily basis among the newspaper’s show-business reporters."How, exactly, Morgan got one of his most famous voicemail-related
scoops remains shrouded in mystery. When asked under oath at the British
parliament's inquiry as to how he listened to a voicemail of Paul
McCartney pleading with his former wife Heather Mills, he declined to
answer, saying only: "I'm not going to start any trail that leads to the identification of a source."Morgan has previously denied
he published any story based on hacking: "I have never hacked a phone,
told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story
obtained from the hacking of a phone."But that denial will take some explaining in the light of these previously reported events:

Former NOTW reporter Paul McMullan officially linked Morgan's name
to Lord Justice Leveson's probe of tabloid phone hacking. Here's exactly what McMullan said:
"My first editor, Piers Morgan, very much set the trend. He was, 'I
want that story at all costs. I don't care what you had to do to get
that story.'"

Morgan and the 13th person arrested in the scandal, James Desborough, both worked at News Corp.'s News of the World and both worked on the story of Paul McCartney's divorce from Heather Mills, which is said to be based on voicemails.

On Gun Free Zones: Lunatics have free reign in gun free zones. If good citizens can carry weapons as well (since, obviously, only good citizens will obey 'gun free zone' laws and a bad guy/kill will NOT obey a sign saying "No Guns"), there will greater public safety (with proper training, of course.). Sweden has the lowest accident rate for guns and the highest gun ownership rate as well. To cite problems with laws is one thing, to say it's not possible or bad is another (given the right circumstances).

AuroraIn Colorado the shooter was able to get body armor, a machine gun, and over 5000 rounds of ammunition easily OVER THE INTERNET! In Mexico the ATF had to release them into the wild! (apparently you can't get guns online without any gun-controls/background-checks in Mexico yet, ... so the ATF sent them there? -BTW, the image is Libertarian in origin and understates, by a large amount, how bad Romney would have been.)

One of the most nonsensical discussions was held by Piers Morgan on his show which he got through Donald Trump after working for Rupert Murdoch at the now SHUT DOWN AND DEFAMED Newspaper in England which has led to charges being filed against Rebecca Brooks a family friend of the Murdochs. Given ALL these connections he then puts together a show where both sides are obviously NOT willing to compromise on anything and the NRA guy obviously making up Statistics like that woman on Anderson Cooper 360... but Anderson caught her while Piers Morgan just sits back, gives that ugly smile of his and makes the gun debate even worse even more nonsensical... [ Added 1/8/2013 - Does this look like an interview or an infomercial? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34toUz_bKr4 ]

I agree with the idea of the law. Citizens, properly trained, and well armed make a safer nation. Especially since anarchists (of all religious backgrounds/claims) are growing in frequency and effectiveness. I think every citizen (as per the second amendment) has the right to carry arms as long as they train themselves well.When the constitution was written people lived with guns to hunt and defend themselves so they were extremely well trained... you could say that their weapons had become 'a part of them'. This is the benchmark to know when a person is properly trained.Rule of law and accountability is also important. With the lack of reliability of eyewitness testimony(which has also been written into law by the Supreme Court), cameras in public places (and removal of all gun free zones), is also an important part of regional or national security.

Question: Why is there such animosity towards guns?

1. Because death with a gun is quick or instant

2. A bow and arrow requires effort to pull back the arrow on the string. A throwing knife or a dart requires using your arm. A gun, on the other hand, could go off with a touch. With careful gun training and safety laws that are properly enforced you will end up with more gun related accidents.

The solution here is one of training and removing gun free zones OR removing guns from the planet, at present there is no other solution - And this is not an extreme view because people kill people USING guns. Its not the guns themselves that are responsible. Unfortunately, fear of guns, caused by accidents and a general softness towards the acceptance of death as a part of life has had the strange effect of people blaming a tool for the work of individuals. However, hunting hasn't been banned, so people can get guns for that. Mad men may act angry (like many people on all sides of the political spectrum) or they may not. With don't have the psychological skill to predict a massacre by lone mad men no matter how much we would like to believe that. that's why we are constantly being surprised by acts of violence as the standard human response is to think that, "this couldn't happen here" or "I can't believe someone like him was behind the massacre, looks so 'normal'" or "I can't believe it was someone from "this" community (whatever that community may be).Other factors in the fear of guns...Absurdity of gun laws and/or proposals

Notes:Discussions of keeping guns away from officials at about 1000 feet (how could you possibly administer such a ridiculous law?). A valid point made by Stewart 3min and 15 second into video: 'Violent rhetoric and imagery is wrong in and of itself and should be stopped just for that reason and not because it inspires some people to act violently'

School shootings happens by a crazy person in an area where guns are not allowed. Problem is that anti-gun campaigns have become such an entrenched part of 'democratic' or a 'societal safety' viewpoint that certain important facts are ignored. On the other hand the US has the worst record for just about everything (in the industrial/first world nations)... and education is one of them. So trusting people with guns will get more and more dangerous with time.

Quotes

"Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it. It will turn to gold. Resurrection will be now. Every moment, a new beauty." - Rumi

"God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that." - Joseph Campbell

"Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history." - Carl Jung

"Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society." - George Washington

“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.” - Dalai Lama

“Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison. When the door is so wide open?” ― Rumi